Jazz Drummers: 15 Greats from Art Blakey to Marcus Gilmore

These 15 jazz drummers changed what the drum kit does in a jazz band, from Art Blakey and Max Roach, who built the drum language of bebop and hard bop, to Terri Lyne Carrington and Makaya McCraven, who are still making records today. They are listed in order of birth, not ranked, and each entry says what the drummer changed and names a record to start with. The swing-era drummers who came first, including Gene Krupa, Jo Jones and Buddy Rich, have their own section before the list.

The selection weighs influence on other drummers and on how jazz was played. At least six of the 15 released records or earned Grammy nominations in 2025 or 2026; Roy Haynes died in November 2024 and Jack DeJohnette in October 2025. Many of the albums named here also appear in our 50 best jazz albums of all time.

Before Bebop: The Drummers Who Came First

Early jazz drummers kept time mainly on the bass drum and snare. These six built the kit the later drummers inherited.

• Baby Dodds (1898-1959) played in King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven and was among the first drummers recorded improvising. His 1945 solos for Circle Records are perhaps the first unaccompanied jazz drum recordings.
• Chick Webb (1905-1939) led the house band at the Savoy Ballroom from 1931 and began featuring the teenage Ella Fitzgerald in 1935. Buddy Rich cited him as a major influence.
• Gene Krupa (1909-1973) became a national celebrity in Benny Goodman’s band. His tom-tom passages on “Sing, Sing, Sing” (1937) were the first extended drum solos recorded commercially, and his work with Slingerland and Zildjian helped standardize tunable tom-toms and the modern hi-hat.
• Jo Jones (1911-1985) anchored Count Basie’s rhythm section from 1934 to 1948, moved steady timekeeping from the bass drum to the hi-hat and was an early champion of brushes.
• Kenny Clarke (1914-1985) was the house drummer at Minton’s Playhouse in the early 1940s, where bebop took shape. He kept time on the ride cymbal and used the bass drum for irregular accents, known as “dropping bombs”.
• Buddy Rich (1917-1987) played with Artie Shaw and Tommy Dorsey and led his own big band from 1966 until his death. He was famous for his speed and power and never learned to read music.

15 Jazz Drummers Who Shaped Modern Jazz

1. Art Blakey (1919-1990)

Art Blakey came up in Billy Eckstine’s big band with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, then formed the Jazz Messengers with Horace Silver in the mid-1950s and led the band for 35 years. It became the training ground of hard bop: Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett, Wynton Marsalis and Terence Blanchard all passed through. His trademarks were a hi-hat snapped shut on beats two and four and loud snare and bass drum accents in triplets and cross-rhythms. He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.

Start with: Moanin’ (Blue Note, recorded 1958), with Lee Morgan and Benny Golson.

2. Philly Joe Jones (1923-1985)

Philly Joe Jones drove the Miles Davis Quintet with John Coltrane, Red Garland and Paul Chambers from 1955 to 1958. Davis said Jones was his favorite drummer, and Bill Evans said the same. The “Philly” kept him apart from the older Jo Jones. A common mix-up: the drummer on Kind of Blue (1959) is Jimmy Cobb, not Philly Joe. In 1981 Jones helped found Dameronia, a band playing the music of Tadd Dameron, which he led until his death.

Start with: Workin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet (Prestige, recorded 1956, released 1960).

3. Max Roach (1924-2007)

Max Roach and Kenny Clarke worked out bebop timekeeping in the 1940s: the pulse on the ride cymbal, with snare and bass drum free for accents. Roach played on Charlie Parker’s November 1945 Savoy session that produced “Ko-Ko” and co-led a quintet with Clifford Brown from 1954 until Brown’s death in 1956. In 1960 he recorded We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite with Abbey Lincoln, and on Drums Unlimited (Atlantic, 1966) several tracks are drum solos built on themes and variations. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1988.

Start with: Clifford Brown & Max Roach (EmArcy, 1954).

4. Roy Haynes (1925-2024)

Roy Haynes played in Charlie Parker’s quintet from 1949 to 1952 and toured with Sarah Vaughan from 1953 to 1958. His sharp snare sound earned him the nickname “Snap Crackle”. In the 1960s he often filled in for Elvin Jones in John Coltrane’s quartet, and in 1968 he played on Chick Corea’s Now He Sings, Now He Sobs. He co-led Question and Answer (1990) with Pat Metheny and became an NEA Jazz Master in 1995. He died on November 12, 2024, aged 99.

Start with: Out of the Afternoon (Impulse!, 1962), with Roland Kirk.

5. Elvin Jones (1927-2004)

Elvin Jones joined John Coltrane in 1960 and stayed until early 1966, in the quartet with McCoy Tyner and Jimmy Garrison that recorded My Favorite Things and A Love Supreme. His polyrhythmic, legato playing kept several rhythms moving around the beat at once and pulled the drums into the foreground. He left partly because his style clashed with Rashied Ali, the second drummer Coltrane had added, and from the early 1980s he led the Elvin Jones Jazz Machine.

Start with: A Love Supreme (Impulse!, recorded December 9, 1964, released January 1965).

6. Jack DeJohnette (1942-2025)

Jack DeJohnette started on piano in Chicago and first drew international attention in Charles Lloyd’s quartet, where he met Keith Jarrett. In 1969 he replaced Tony Williams in Miles Davis’s band and became the main drummer on Bitches Brew. He led Special Edition and other groups, and from 1983 spent more than 25 years in Jarrett’s Standards Trio with Gary Peacock. He won Grammys for Peace Time and for Skyline (2021), a trio record with Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Ron Carter. He died on October 26, 2025, at 83.

Start with: Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970) and Keith Jarrett’s Standards, Vol. 1 (ECM, 1983).

7. Billy Cobham (born 1944)

Billy Cobham, born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, played on Miles Davis’s A Tribute to Jack Johnson before he and guitarist John McLaughlin started the Mahavishnu Orchestra in 1971. His power and speed on The Inner Mounting Flame (Columbia, 1971) and Birds of Fire (1973) carried jazz fusion to rock audiences; Bill Bruford and Danny Carey of Tool are among the rock drummers he influenced. He plays open-handed, without crossing his right hand over the snare.

Start with: his solo debut Spectrum (Atlantic, 1973), which reached No. 1 on Billboard’s jazz chart.

8. Tony Williams (1945-1997)

Tony Williams studied with Alan Dawson in Boston and joined Miles Davis in May 1963 at 17, becoming the drummer of the second great quintet with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter. Davis described him as the center the group’s sound revolved around, and his use of polyrhythms and metric modulation changed what a rhythm section could do. In 1969 he formed the Tony Williams Lifetime with John McLaughlin and organist Larry Young; the trio’s debut, Emergency! (Polydor, 1969), was one of the first significant fusion records. In 1995 he shared a Grammy with Hancock, Shorter, Carter and Wallace Roney for A Tribute to Miles.

Start with: E.S.P. (Columbia, 1965), the quintet’s first album, and Emergency!

9. Jeff “Tain” Watts (born 1960)

Jeff “Tain” Watts met Branford Marsalis at Berklee and in 1982 joined the quintet Wynton Marsalis formed with Branford, pianist Kenny Kirkland and bassist Charnett Moffett. He stayed with Wynton’s quartet after Branford and Kirkland left, then spent 1986 to 2009 in the Branford Marsalis Quartet. Watts has won Grammys with Wynton Marsalis, the Branford Marsalis Quartet and the Mingus Big Band, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship for composition in 2017.

Start with: Citizen Tain (Columbia, 1999), his second album as a leader.

10. Terri Lyne Carrington (born 1965)

Terri Lyne Carrington won a full scholarship to Berklee at 11 and moved to New York in 1983 on the advice of her mentor Jack DeJohnette, working with Stan Getz and Cassandra Wilson before becoming house drummer on The Arsenio Hall Show. She toured with Herbie Hancock from 1997 to 2007. Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue, her reworking of the 1962 trio session of Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Max Roach, made her the first woman to win the Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. She has four Grammys, became an NEA Jazz Master in 2021 and founded the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. In 2026 she released Trip the Night Fantastic with her band Social Science.

Start with: Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue (Concord Jazz, 2013).

11. Brian Blade (born 1970)

Brian Blade learned to play in the band at his father’s church in Shreveport, Louisiana, studied in New Orleans and settled in New York in 1992, where he worked for Joshua Redman and Kenny Garrett. In 1997 he formed the Fellowship Band with pianist Jon Cowherd, whose music draws on church, folk and country as much as jazz. From 2000 until Wayne Shorter’s death in 2023 he drummed in Shorter’s quartet with Danilo Pérez and John Patitucci. He has also recorded with Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, won a Grammy with Chick Corea’s trio on Trilogy and received two nominations at the 2026 Grammys.

Start with: Brian Blade Fellowship (Blue Note, 1998).

12. Antonio Sánchez (born 1971)

Antonio Sánchez, born in Mexico City, studied classical piano before moving to Berklee and the New England Conservatory. Pat Metheny heard him on tour with Danilo Pérez’s trio, which he joined in 1997, and Sánchez drummed for the Pat Metheny Group and Metheny’s other bands for two decades, from Speaking of Now, which won a Grammy in 2003, to From This Place (2020). His score for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman (2014) is made of solo drum performances. It won a Grammy and was nominated for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA, but was ruled ineligible for an Oscar because the film also uses more than half an hour of classical music.

Start with: Birdman (Milan, 2014) and Migration (CAM Jazz, 2007), his first album as a leader.

13. Nate Smith (born 1974)

Nate Smith grew up on rock and funk in Chesapeake, Virginia, and turned to jazz at 16 after hearing Art Blakey’s Album of the Year. Betty Carter invited him to play with her at the Blue Note in New York, and in 2003 he joined Dave Holland’s quintet. He has since recorded with Chris Potter and Brittany Howard and co-wrote and produced Michael Jackson’s “Heaven Can Wait”. His album Live-Action (2025) won two Grammys, for Best Alternative Jazz Album and Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals.

Start with: Kinfolk: Postcards from Everywhere (Ropeadope, 2017) and Live-Action (Waterbaby Music, 2025).

14. Makaya McCraven (born 1983)

Makaya McCraven was born in Paris to the drummer Stephen McCraven and the Hungarian singer Ágnes Zsigmondi, grew up in Massachusetts and moved to Chicago in 2007. He treats live jazz the way a hip-hop producer treats samples: for In the Moment (2015) he shaped about 48 hours of improvised recordings into beat-driven tracks, a method his label, International Anthem, compares to Teo Macero’s editing of Miles Davis’s On the Corner. Universal Beings was recorded with musicians in New York, Chicago, London and Los Angeles. He released Off the Record in 2025.

Start with: Universal Beings (International Anthem, 2018).

15. Marcus Gilmore (born 1986)

Marcus Gilmore is Roy Haynes’s grandson and has toured professionally since he was 16. He has recorded with Vijay Iyer since 2005 and played in Chick Corea’s band on Antidote, which won the Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album. He names Elvin Jones, Tony Williams’s Lifetime and the free-jazz drummer Milford Graves among his influences. In 2025 he released Journey to the New: Live at the Village Vanguard, and at the 2026 Grammys he won for his playing on Sullivan Fortner’s Southern Nights.

Start with: Vijay Iyer’s trio album Accelerando (ACT, 2012).

More Jazz Drummers Worth Hearing

Jimmy Cobb (1929-2020) played on Kind of Blue and was the last surviving musician from its sessions. Paul Motian (1931-2011) loosened the drummer’s strict timekeeping role, above all in Bill Evans’s trio from 1959 to 1964. Billy Higgins (1936-2001) played on Ornette Coleman’s first records and dozens of Blue Note albums in the 1960s. Al Foster (1943-2025) took over from DeJohnette in Miles Davis’s band in 1972, stayed until 1985 and died in May 2025.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the best jazz drummer of all time?

There is no single answer. The drummers who changed the instrument most are Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, who moved jazz time onto the ride cymbal in the 1940s; Art Blakey, who defined hard bop drumming; Elvin Jones, whose polyrhythms carried John Coltrane’s quartet; and Tony Williams, who reshaped the rhythm section with Miles Davis. From the swing era, Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich are the best-known names.

Who are the best jazz drummers today?

Among drummers active in 2025 and 2026 are Terri Lyne Carrington, Brian Blade and Antonio Sánchez, all nominated at the 2026 Grammys; Nate Smith, whose Live-Action won two Grammys; Makaya McCraven, who released Off the Record in 2025; and Marcus Gilmore, who won a Grammy for his playing on Sullivan Fortner’s Southern Nights. Roy Haynes died in 2024, and Al Foster and Jack DeJohnette in 2025.

Which jazz drummers are NEA Jazz Masters?

The National Endowment for the Arts has named jazz masters since 1982. Drummers among them include Kenny Clarke (1983), Max Roach (1984), Jo Jones (1985), Art Blakey (1988), Roy Haynes (1995), Billy Higgins (1997), Elvin Jones (2003), Jimmy Cobb (2009), Jack DeJohnette (2012) and Terri Lyne Carrington (2021).

Which jazz drummers inspired Whiplash?

Director Damien Chazelle based the bandleader Terence Fletcher on his former band instructor and added elements of Buddy Rich and other harsh bandleaders. In the film, Fletcher tells the story of Jo Jones throwing a cymbal at Charlie Parker. In the real incident, at the Reno Club in Kansas City in 1936, Jones threw a cymbal onto the floor near the young Parker’s feet after Parker lost track of the chord changes.